When comparing Solr vs Searchify (Hosted IndexTank), the Slant community recommends Solr for most people. In the question“What are the best search engines for web applications?” Solr is ranked 2nd while Searchify (Hosted IndexTank) is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Solr is:
A key differentiator of Solr is the level of customizability the [SearchComponent](http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SearchComponent) feature provides. >SearchComponent provides the developer astonishing flexibility in the way search queries are assembled and executed. At the time of writing, there does not appear to be a ElasticSearch equivalent of SearchComponent. [source](http://www.elasticsearchtutorial.com/elasticsearch-vs-solr.html) Whilst ElasticSearch has a number of plugin-points there doesn't appear to be an equivalent of Solr's SearchComponent that enables you to modify the workflow of existing API endpoints.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Customizablity
A key differentiator of Solr is the level of customizability the SearchComponent feature provides.
SearchComponent provides the developer astonishing flexibility in the way search queries are assembled and executed. At the time of writing, there does not appear to be a ElasticSearch equivalent of SearchComponent. source
Whilst ElasticSearch has a number of plugin-points there doesn't appear to be an equivalent of Solr's SearchComponent that enables you to modify the workflow of existing API endpoints.
Pro Open source
Pro Stats component
Solr allows to view average, standard deviation, maximum, minimum, sum of squares of a particular numeric field. It also allows faceting of that numeric field based on the value(s) of other fields.
Pro Results grouping
Solr allows you to group search results. Results can be grouped by:
- Field Value
- Query
- Function Query
You can also collapse multiple results with the same field value down to a single result.
Pro Decision tree faceting
Solr has a faceting feature called pivot facets or 'decision tree facets'. Pivot facets enable you to calculate facets inside a parents facet, for example pivoting on 'size' than 'color' returns 'color' facet counts for each 'size' facet
Pro Local params
Solr has a great feature that enables you to use LocalParams to perform more advanced faceting. They provide a way to "localize" information about a specific argument that is being sent to Solr. In other words, LocalParams provide a way to add meta-data to certain argument types such as query strings. From the Solr Wiki:
LocalParams are expressed as prefixes to arguments to be sent to Solr. For example:
Assume we have the existing query parameter
q=solr rocks
We can prefix this query string with LocalParams to provide more information to the query parser, for example changing the default operator type to "AND" and the default field to "title" for the lucene query parser:
q={!q.op=AND df=title}solr rocks
Pro SpellChecker
Solr allows has the functionality to check and correct spelling mistakes in search queries. The three main implementations are:
- IndexBasedSpellChecker
- WordBreadkSolrSpellChecker
- DirectSolrSpellChecker
Pro "Did you mean?" suggestions
Pro Field weights
Option to give one field, such as "title", a higher weight than another field for relevance ranking.
Pro True real-time updates
Pro Autocomplete / suggest
Pro Geolocation search
Sorting and filtering by distance
Pro Works without provided libraries
The API consists of REST calls that can be made through HTTP which enables Searchify to be used even without one of the provided libraries.
Pro Multiple libraries
Searchify has libraries in Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, Node.js and more.
Cons
Con General missing features
Solr is currently missing the following general features:
- Per-doc/query analyzer chain
- Support for nested documents
- Support for multiple document types per schema
- Ability to modify document scores with custom scripts
- Equivalent to Elasticsearch's percolation
Con Missing some useful features for cloud distribution
Solr is currently missing the following features that are useful when managing a distributed system:
- Automatic shard rebalancing
- Ability to re-locate shards and replicas on demand
- Ability to change the schema without restarting the server
- Ability to search across multiple indexes.
Con No free tier
Searchify has no free tier. It starts at $59/month for 50000 documents or $25/month if using the Heroku addon.